A Place for Emotional Appeals

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Okay, let's go to Galatians.
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Galatians chapter 4 and verse 12.
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Moving on down through our study of Galatians.
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Today we're going to look at the subject.
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I've entitled this portion, Paul's Emotional Appeal.
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And I think you'll understand why as I teach the lesson.
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So, Galatians chapter 4, verse 12, down to 20.
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Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.
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You did me no wrong.
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You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the Gospel to you at first.
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And though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.
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What then has become of the blessing you felt? For I testify to you that if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.
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Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose.
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They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.
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It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose.
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And not only when I am present with you, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.
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I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.
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Let's pray.
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Father, as I come to this text and we look at the raw emotion of the Apostle Paul whose heart is broken over the behavior of his spiritual children, Lord, I am in my heart knitted to Paul in this way that I have seen so many who have been listeners and hearers of the Gospel and those who would proclaim themselves as followers of Christ who have turned away from the church, who have turned away from the ministry, who have turned away from the very Gospel of Jesus.
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And it is such a heartbreaking moment and one, of course, that does cause the emotions to overflow.
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So I pray, O God, that You would in Your mercy today help us to understand the heart of the Apostle Paul.
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Help us to understand that his heart is Your heart.
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For, Lord, he speaks and he writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God.
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And Lord, help us to understand that this passage reminds us that we ought to care about the souls of others to the point that our hearts are restless when others are outside of Christ and that we have a desire to see them come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
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We have a desire to see them come to the knowledge of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.
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Father, I pray all this, Lord.
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I pray that You would keep me from error as I teach Your Word in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Galatians is an argument against the Judaizers who wish to make law-keeping part of the Gospel.
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You all remember that, right? And Paul has been making this argument with great force ever since chapter 3.
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And he's made his argument in three ways.
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One, he's made his argument logically.
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He asks the question, did you receive the Spirit by hearing with faith or by works of the law? That's a logical question.
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And the answer, of course, is by hearing with faith.
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And he asks a few other logical questions and he switches to a scriptural argument.
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He says, was Abraham saved by law or by the promise? Of course, by the promise.
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And so he's looking at history and Scripture.
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So he goes from logic to Scripture and then he makes a practical argument.
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How can you turn back? How can you who are pursuing Christ, how can you turn back now and go to the law? So he's made a logical, a scriptural, and a practical argument.
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And the practical argument is what we looked at last week.
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How could you turn back? Well, now, when we get to verses 12-20, he's going to make an emotional argument.
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An emotional argument.
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Now, for some...
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I don't know, I guess I'm going through puberty again.
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For some, emotional arguments are considered to be always bad and we should never appeal to the emotions.
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And for others, emotion is everything.
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There are some churches that you will go to where the entire service is designed to affect your emotions.
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From the way the lights look to the way the air conditioner is set, to the way the sound comes through the sound systems.
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Everything is intended to inspire an emotional response.
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In fact, you'll know you're in one of those churches if at a certain point in the service, all the lights go down and the music comes up.
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Because as the lights go down and the music comes up, there's this thing that happens in our minds.
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It encourages us to respond because now we can't be seen.
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The lights are down.
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It's a hidden in the shadows situation.
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And now the appeal through the music is to come! Remember the songs of the old revivalists? The songs were, Just as I am without one plea.
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You know, come, I come.
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It was all about coming.
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And so there's an emotional push in the service to try to instigate a response.
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But as I said, there's another side that says emotion should have no place in worship.
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It should all be intellectual.
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It should all be about the gray matter.
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Not the heart, but the brain.
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And when we come to worship, we should be the frozen chosen.
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Where we sit stoically and listen to God's word quietly.
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Never ever once should you say amen.
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Never ever once should you respond to the pastor's appeals.
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But you should sit as it were like a stone.
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You ever been in a church like that? Yeah.
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Kind of grew up in a church like that.
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Kind of grew up in a church like that.
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Roman Catholic, who said that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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There's almost a force to sit perfectly still.
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And not allow any emotional eruptions.
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And so as I said, there's two wildly divergent extremes.
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You have the hyper-charismatics who everything is based in emotion.
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And then you have the frozen chosen who say that any emotion at all is unhealthy and ungodly.
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And so there's this wide divergence.
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And as is often the case, the truth is found not at the ends of the divergent spectrums, but the truth is often found in the middle.
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I want to share with you an illustration that I use when I teach on emotions because I think it's helpful.
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Some of you may have seen this.
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I don't know.
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I'm sure you've seen it.
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But I don't know if I've ever taught it here.
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It's an illustration of a train.
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Now, I'm not going to be a super good artist here, but I'm going to draw three boxcars.
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Have we done this? No.
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I've seen it.
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You've seen it.
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I've been here a year.
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Huh? I've been here a year.
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You've been here for a while.
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So I think I've shown this to you a while back.
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Alright, so each one of these represents the train of our spirituality.
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And we have three words that we want to deal with.
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The first one, of course, is the word emotions.
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The second one is facts.
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The third one is faith.
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We have three components of our spiritual life.
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Emotions, facts, and faith.
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And we have three cars in the train.
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And one, of course, is the engine that pulls the rest of the train.
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So, therefore, the engine would be that which is most important, right? The engine is the part that's getting everything else to move.
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So the engine is the primary.
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And, of course, you have the middle car, and then you have the caboose, which pulls up the end.
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So my question to you would be, which do you think of these, and we'll do it by a survey of hands, which do you think of these should be in the engine compartment? Which do you think should be bringing everything forward? Who would say it's emotions? Is it the engine? Nobody.
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Okay.
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Who would say it's facts? Okay.
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And who would say it's faith? Okay.
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All right.
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I'm going to tell you my opinion, and again, it's worth what you pay for it.
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I don't believe that it's faith.
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I believe that it's facts.
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And let me tell you why.
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The first is facts, and here's why.
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If what you believe is not true, then it doesn't matter.
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And I can base that on Scripture, because the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus Christ is not raised, you above all men are most to be pitied, because you believed a lie.
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The facts are first and foremost.
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The fact is God exists.
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The fact is Jesus Christ is His Son.
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The fact is He rose from the dead.
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And if any one of those facts be untrue, our faith is in vain.
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So faith must be in the facts.
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Faith is in the facts.
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But that's where a lot of people stop.
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They say, okay, I've got faith in the facts.
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I believe the truth, and I know the truth is the truth.
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Therefore, I'm good.
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And they never have it go from the head to the heart.
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And therefore, they leave out the emotions.
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You see, your faith should be in the facts, but your faith should also produce a heartfelt response.
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If you have a belief in Jesus that does not cause you any type of heart response, there's no emotional response in your faith, then I would say your faith is lacking an essential component.
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Guys, this is serious.
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Because if you've never had a broken heart for your sin, if you've never had a broken heart for lost people, if you've never been stirred in your heart for what Christ has done for you, if there is no emotional response in your faith, that is a major red flag.
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Because it really does deal with the question of is it all up here and not in here? You know what the Bible says? That we are to believe in our heart.
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God raised Christ from the dead.
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We don't believe in our hearts, guys.
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We believe in our minds.
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Because that's where the function of belief comes from.
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That's where the function of thought comes from.
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It comes in our minds, but we're not told to believe in our minds.
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We're told to believe in our heart.
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And in the ancient world, when the writers were writing, the heart was the seat of the emotions.
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The heart was where we emote.
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It's where our feelings come from.
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And boy, you've got to be careful talking about feelings.
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Because some people take feelings to the extreme, as we've already stated.
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And by the way, if you want another F, you can change emotion to feelings.
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And it can be fact, faith, and feelings.
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I just thought about that, and that would actually probably work better for the alliteration purposes of our memory.
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But it's facts come first because that's what we believe in.
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Faith is in the facts.
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And faith should produce feelings.
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Feelings of brokenness.
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Feelings of joy.
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Feelings of love.
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What does 1 Corinthians say? If I believe all things, if I trust all things, if I know all things, but I have not love, I am nothing.
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Even if I give all my money, oh boy, that's going to be bad.
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Irish, he didn't like you leaving.
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He didn't like you leaving.
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He poured his coffee all over your stuff.
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Oh, that was his coffee.
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Oh boy.
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I'm sorry, I was just teasing you.
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The coffee smell could have been worse, could have been a Budweiser.
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Oh, come on, you're from Ireland.
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I was going to say, a Budweiser.
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I want some cheese without ween.
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Ween.
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I don't know if I've ever had ween.
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Alright, guys.
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You know, it's never a dull moment here.
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There's always something.
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Do you guys get what I'm talking about? The fact that our faith should be in the facts, but our faith should also produce feelings, it should produce emotions, and if it doesn't, there's some kind of a disconnect between the head and the heart.
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Now, the reason why I bring all that up is because Paul is going to make an emotional appeal.
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Some people think that's wrong.
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You should never appeal to the emotions.
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Well, if that's wrong, then Paul's wrong here.
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And if Paul's wrong, then the Holy Spirit's wrong because this is being written under the inspiration of the Spirit.
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So we know that in making this emotional appeal, he's not doing anything wrong.
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He's actually doing it right because he's doing it under the leadership of God, the Holy Spirit.
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And what he wants them to know is that even though so far he has been very harsh with them.
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And by the way, if you haven't noticed, his words have been harsh.
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If anybody believes the Gospel other than the one I preach, let him be damned.
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That's pretty much what he says in verses 6-9 of chapter 1.
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He's called Peter out for his going back.
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He's called them out directly.
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He has wondered about their very souls.
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And you might think that he doesn't love them because of that.
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You might think that he doesn't love them because he's being hard on them.
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And so for a moment, he's going to step back and he's going to say, understand this, I love you.
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And you need to understand that's the reason for this.
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By the way, he's going to get even harder later.
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He's going to say about the Judaizers, I wish they would just emasculate themselves.
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He's going to say that, and basically what he means is that they would cut themselves physically.
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The word is actually, circumcision means cut around.
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The word used in the Greek means cut off.
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And the idea is I wish they would just go away.
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So he's not against using harsh language.
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Paul is going to use harsh language, and he has.
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But he wants them to know it's not because he doesn't love them, it's because he does love them.
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And if you have children, one thing you have to understand is sometimes the most harsh language you've ever used is with the people you love the most because of the danger that they're in, because of the actions that they're taking.
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And you have to be harsh not because you don't love them, but because you do love them.
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So we're going to look at these words.
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We're going to go line by line as we always do.
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I don't know if we'll get all the way to verse 20, but we'll try because I do think this holds together as a unit.
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And when we study, I think understanding the text as a unit is helpful.
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So let's begin in verse 12.
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Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.
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Now, before we get to the next section of verse 12, let's just look at that sentence.
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Brothers, I entreat you.
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That word entreat is not a word we use a lot.
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The ESV is using a word that I think is a little obscure.
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Not obscure, but it's just not a common word.
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The New Living Translation uses the word plead.
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And it literally means beg.
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It means to desire.
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It's what I want.
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And what's interesting is that in English, we have it at the beginning.
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Brothers, I beg you, become as I am.
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But actually in the Greek, it's at the end of the sentence.
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And word order in Greek isn't as essential in determining subject and predicate and things as it is in English.
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But what it does often do is show the emphasis of something.
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And by Paul putting that phrase, I beg you, at the end of the sentence, it's actually emphasizing that.
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Because if you think of it like this, become as I am, as I also become as you are, I beg you.
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That's the way it would sound if we were saying it as it's written in the original language.
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He's saying, brothers, I'm begging you to do this.
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And by the way, this is really the first time in Galatians that there's an appeal to do something.
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Up until this point, it's all been examples of what is going on and he's telling them what's wrong.
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Now he's saying, now I want you to do this.
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I actually want you to accomplish something.
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I want you to listen to me and follow my command.
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And here it is.
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Become as I am, as I have become as you are.
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Now that's a weird statement.
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And I think that it's one of those times where there's a lot of opportunity for misinterpretation.
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What does Paul mean when he says, become as I am? Well, I believe a reasonable interpretation is in regard to the issue of the law.
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Because what's the whole book about? The Judaizers.
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The Judaizers are saying you must keep the law to be saved.
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And what is Paul saying? Become as I am.
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Well, how is Paul? Paul is one who has died to the law and is living in Christ.
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He is one who has now become one who is no longer under law, but is under grace.
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And so he's saying to the Galatians, you who are being encouraged to go back to the law, you need to become as I am.
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Because I have abandoned that system.
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I have abandoned that way of salvation.
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Remember the two mountains, guys.
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What are the two mountains? Law Mountain and grace.
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If you try to climb Law Mountain, you'll never reach the top.
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In fact, have you ever read The Pilgrim's Progress? Which one did you watch? It's like a cartoon.
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That's a great...
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I'm so glad because I was going to go.
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If you haven't read it, you need to watch the cartoon.
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Okay, listen.
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You remember in the cartoon, the animated film.
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Call it a cartoon.
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It sounds a little immature.
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The animated production.
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You remember in the animated film where he got off the path and he went to the mountain and there were all the laws that were popping up and every time he tried to climb a little higher, another law would come up and it would knock him back down.
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And as he tried to get...
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That is a perfect example.
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In fact, I watched it just the other day too.
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And I'm thinking, this is what I've been talking about in Galatians.
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That's Law Mountain.
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You cannot persevere up Law Mountain.
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You can't make it.
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You will not be saved by keeping the law.
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The only way you will be saved is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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And that's the point Paul's making.
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I want you to be like me because I realized my danger in trying to find my salvation in law.
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What was Paul? Paul was a Pharisee.
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What does he say in Romans 7? He talks about the fact that the law came alive and showed him his covetousness.
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It showed him his sin.
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And it showed him how desperate he was.
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The law does not save.
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It simply shows us how condemned we are.
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You cannot be saved by the law.
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Therefore, be like me, Paul is saying.
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Paul's not lifting himself up as a perfect man, but he is saying he's on the right path.
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And the right path is the path of grace, not the path of law.
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And he's saying, be like me.
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That part I think is fairly easy to understand.
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The next part is the hard part because he says, even as I have been like you.
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Now, what does that mean? Well, that is the harder of the two statements.
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And actually, the Greek reads a little weird here because he says, become as I am as I you.
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That's basically all the Greek says.
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Become as I am as I you.
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In the English Standard Version, it says, as I also became as you are.
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It kind of expands the English out.
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But the Greek is very simple.
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Become as I am as I am you, or as I you.
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And ultimately, I think that what he is saying is that when I came to you, I was like you in that I came to you as one who was not under law.
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Because when I came to you, you weren't under law.
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Because when Paul came to the Galatians, he didn't come to a group of Jews.
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He came to a group of Gentiles.
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And he didn't come in to them with a group of laws saying you need to keep these laws.
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He came in as one who wasn't under the law.
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They were already not under the law.
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He said, be saved by grace.
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Go from not being under the law to now being under grace.
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The Judaizers come in and say, you need to be under the law.
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They're taking him backwards.
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I hope I'm not confusing.
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Let me say it like this.
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Basically like this.
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You were never under the law.
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Because you were pagans.
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You were never under the restrictions of the law.
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You were never keeping the law.
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Why now? Become as I am.
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I'm under grace.
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As I have become as you are.
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Because I used to be under the law and I became as you who were never under the law.
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You see, I became like you.
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Now you need to become like me.
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I became as one who wasn't under the law and now we need to understand the only way to be saved is not by going back under the law, but by going forward under grace.
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Like I said, it's not easy to understand, but I do think that's what he's saying.
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He talks about that in verse 12.
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I became as you and I bring you the Word.
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Exactly.
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And I became all things to all men that I might win some.
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That's the point.
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He became like them so that he could win them.
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This is the danger going back to what Peter did, right? Peter became like them only when the Jews weren't looking.
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But when the Jews looked, he separated himself.
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And Paul says you can't do that.
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You can't do that because what you're doing is you're setting up a false standard and you're setting up a separate salvation for the Jews here, salvation for the Gentiles here.
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But yeah, he said I became like you.
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Became all things to all men that I might win some.
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So yeah, I think that's what he means here.
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He says I entreat you, become as I am because I became as you are.
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Now the next sentence is also a little confusing, but I don't think entirely difficult to understand.
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He says you did me no wrong.
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Now, this is important.
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I keep mentioning the Greek language.
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This is important when you read it in the original language because he is talking about the fact that in the past, and this is in that particular tense where it's in the past, he says you did me no wrong.
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He's not talking about the fact that they've never done him wrong because they're doing him wrong right now.
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They are doing him wrong now by turning back.
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But what he's saying is you did me no wrong.
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And this is connected to verse 13, so I want to show you that.
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He says in verse 13, you know it was because of a bodily ailment I preached the Gospel to you at first and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.
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So Paul is talking now, beginning in the end of verse 12 and beginning of verse 13, he's talking about the way that he was first received by the Galatians.
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When Paul came to Galatia, they received him well.
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They demonstrated love to him even though they were pagans.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Have you ever had pagan people treat you good? Have you ever had pagan people treat you better than church people? Ain't that a shame? But it has happened, right? And that's Paul's point.
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When I came to you, I came to you, and he says here, I had a bodily ailment.
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Now he doesn't tell us what the ailment is.
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I believe in verse 15, he makes an allusion to it because I think he had an eye problem.
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But some people believe if you read John MacArthur's notes, John MacArthur believes he had malaria.
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MS.
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MS.
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Multiple sclerosis.
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I've never read that, but people have come up with all kinds...
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He had hands.
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In some verses he said that I would write this letter with my hands.
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So it shows me that some of his letters, his hands didn't work.
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Could be.
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And again, there's a lot of speculation about Paul's ailments.
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Something we've got to remember, he was stoned.
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Paul was stoned almost to death.
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I've got to imagine there's some physical ramifications from that.
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The fact that he was stoned almost to death.
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And by the way, where was he stoned? He was stoned in Lystra I believe if I remember from Acts.
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What's in Galatia? Lystra.
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Iconium.
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Derbe.
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Those are the Galatian churches.
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So where was he stoned? In one of the Galatian regions.
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So it's possible that he's been stoned, beaten, bloodied and everything, and now he goes into this area and he's received with love.
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Read it again.
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He says, you know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the Gospel to you at first.
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Why would he say that? Something got me to preach the Gospel to you because I was hurting.
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It could have been that he had just been stoned and now he's in town and he's literally looking for a place to recover and that's what got him there and now he's preaching to them.
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You know it was a bodily ailment that brought me here and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but you received me as an angel of God.
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Why was his condition a trial to him? Because they had to take care of him.
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It would be like here.
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You guys have guys come in sometimes that are really, really having it hard.
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Whether they're sick or whether they've gone through physical ailments and you take them in and they require extra care because of that sickness or because of that ailment or whatever.
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Maybe somebody's going through withdrawals and they require extra grace to get them through that symptom or that situation.
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That is an example of the love that's being shown.
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But remember, it's love from pagans.
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That's the weird thing.
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These Galatians are pagans and they're showing love to Paul and Paul's saying, you accepted me like an angel.
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You took me in like an angel of Christ.
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What a blessing that these Galatians have been to Paul.
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And notice his appeal.
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What's the appeal? You used to love me.
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You showed great love toward me.
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He's reminding them of the relationship that he had with them.
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And verse 15 I think really knocks it out of the park because he says, what then has become of your blessedness? For you, I testify that if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.
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That's what makes me think that it's possibly an eye problem because remember Paul.
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What happened to Paul the first moment he was saved? He was blinded.
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He was blinded on the road to Damascus.
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Now, could it be that his ailment...
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He talks later about a thorn in the flesh.
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We remember reading that in other places.
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Could it be that his thorn in the flesh was his eyes were not as functional? That he couldn't see as well? We know that in most of his writings, he has someone else writing for him.
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That could be his hand problem that you mentioned.
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It could also be his eye.
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It could be a combination.
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It could be the fact that he's been beaten with stones.
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I mean, there's all these things.
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But he mentioned specifically, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.
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Which makes me think it's probably mainly...
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Maybe he got hit with a stone in the eye.
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Maybe it doesn't have to do with the fact that when he was saved, he was blinded.
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Maybe it's the fact that when he was stoned, his face was pummeled with stones and now he has trouble seeing.
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But he's making the point...
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Is he okay? You okay, brother? You're making the point...
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Is somebody calling for him? Oh, JJ.
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Yeah, yeah.
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He's making the point.
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Look again at verse 15.
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He's making the point that they loved him so much when they received him, they would have taken out their eyes and given them to him.
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Now, is that exaggerated? I don't know.
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But the point that he's making...
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It's the same as like this, brother.
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You ever told somebody, man, you'd give me the shirt off your back or I'd give you the shirt off my back? Or I'd give my right arm to help you? That's the example.
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That's the language that he's using.
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He's saying, you loved me so much.
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One, you treated me like an angel.
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When I came, you treated me like I was a representative of God through Christ, which I am.
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And you would have given me your eyes were it necessary.
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You have loved me.
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You have loved me.
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I was to you a blessing and you were to me a blessing.
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But now, verse 16, this all builds up to this question.
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Is everything alright? This builds up to this question, verse 16.
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Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? Verse 16 is really the heart-cutting question.
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Because what he's saying, it's like if you and I had been friends for years, brother, and I said, brother, when we met, you were so good to me and you did me well and you helped me out in a time of great distress.
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I was broken, I was beaten, I was hurt.
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You took me in.
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You fed me.
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You clothed me.
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And now because I tell you the truth, you don't like me anymore? Now because I'm willing to be honest with you, you're going to hate me? Am I going to be your enemy now because I'm telling you the truth? It is, right? It really is.
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You used to love me.
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You'd give anything for me.
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But now I'm your enemy.
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Why? Because I told you the truth.
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I want to say this.
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There are fewer ways to more quickly create an enemy than by telling him the truth.
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Proverbs 27.6.
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You all know that one? Proverbs 27.6.
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Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
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Profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
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What does that mean? Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
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A friend will tell you what's true even if it hurts.
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An enemy will profusely lavish upon you kisses and it's useless.
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You know what I can't stand? I can't stand it when people lie to me because they want me to think better of them.
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They tell me all about all kinds of things that are untrue.
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And most of the time, it's telling me how great I am.
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You ever had somebody tell you how great you are just because they're trying to get you to do something for them or they're trying to win a spot in your life or win favor in your life? That's called flattery.
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You know what flattery is.
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What does the Bible say about flattery? Proverbs 29.5 A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.
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Proverbs 29.5 A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.
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Basically what he's doing, if he's flattering you, he's making a trap for you.
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A flatter is like a trap.
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And I've had that over the years.
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I've been in the same church preaching for going on 15 years.
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And there have been people who have come to the church and almost the day they come, they start telling me how great I am.
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And the one thing I know is it just ain't so.
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They tell me how great I am because they want something from me.
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They want a position.
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They want the ability to speak into the life of the church.
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I'll get with you in just a second, brother.
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Let me finish my thought.
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They want something that they value and so they think that if they can make me think well of them and by telling me good about me, then they'll somehow increase their own stock in the church.
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It's a dangerous thing.
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Yes, brother, go ahead.
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What if a brother gives a kiss to anybody but he doesn't want no return? I'm just about to say that.
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Paul's actually just about to say that.
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I'm not saying I've never taken a compliment.
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I'm not saying I've never believed a person who gave me a compliment.
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I appreciate it.
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Y'all know Ed Herrick, right? Ed's a sweet man.
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And Ed always told me how much he appreciated my teaching.
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I don't think he was trying to flatter me.
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I really don't.
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But he was always so encouraging.
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And I do have people in my life that are just encouragers.
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There was a man who died.
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His name was Irv Hillard.
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He was the most encouraging man I ever met.
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I would go to his house at the end of his life.
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He started getting sick and he wasn't able to come to church.
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So I'd go to his house and he would open the door and he'd be so happy it was me.
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And he would say, it's my pastor, my best friend.
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His daughter one time told me she showed up at the house and he opened the door and he saw it and he went...
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And she goes, why'd you do that? He goes, I thought it was the pastor.
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And it was you.
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So I don't think he was trying to flatter me.
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He loved me.
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And there is a difference.
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And you can usually pinpoint the difference.
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You can tell when somebody's trying to increase their stock in your life telling you how great you are.
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That's right, exactly.
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Like I said, the one thing, I just know it ain't true.
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I don't want to say it.
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I'm recording this.
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I'm thanking a lot of people.
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I don't want to say no names.
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Now I've got to go back and edit the recording.
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But you know people like that.
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I want to read a quote from Martin Luther.
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Y'all know I love Luther.
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And he wrote a good commentary on Galatians.
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Verse 16 A true friend will admonish his erring brother, and if the erring brother has any sense at all, he will thank his friend.
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In the world, truth produces hatred.
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Whoever speaks the truth is counted as an enemy.
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But among friends it is not so, much less among Christians.
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The Apostle wants his Galatians to know that just because he told them the truth, they are not to think he dislikes them.
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I told you the truth because I love you.
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That's all quoted from Luther.
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That's the point.
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Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? No! In fact, the opposite is true.
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I'm your best friend if I tell you the truth.
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Verse 17 Paul changes his direction now and he starts to talk again about the Judaizers because he says, they make much of you but for no good purpose.
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They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.
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By the way, that's just exactly what we were just talking about.
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Who are the they? The Judaizers.
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He says the Judaizers make much of you.
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What does that mean? The Judaizers are the ones who are flattering you.
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The Judaizers are the ones who are building you up and telling you how great you are.
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You're keeping the law.
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You're doing good.
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But they're actually shutting you out.
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What are they shutting them out from? The Gospel.
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They're building them up in this false view of God and this false view of the law and they're hurting them by shutting them out of the Gospel.
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And what does he say? That you might make much of them.
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That's flattery 101.
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They're making much of you because they want you to make much of them.
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Again, that's what flattery is.
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The reason why somebody builds you up in a false way is because they want you to build them up in return.
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Their motivation has always been their own benefit.
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I don't know who the Judaizers were.
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I don't have a list of names.
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You know, John, Jim, James, Joe.
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I don't know why they were all with J's.
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But anyway, I don't know who the Judaizers were.
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But Paul has a very low opinion of them when it comes to their motivation.
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Somebody asked.
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I don't remember who it was.
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One of you guys asked a few weeks ago.
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Did I think that the Judaizers knew that they were wrong and they were continuing? And I said I don't know if they knew they were wrong because some people are sincere and sincerely wrong.
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But here's the thing to know.
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Whether they knew they were wrong or not, Paul is saying they are not motivated by love for the Galatians.
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They're motivated by love for self.
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Because he says they're building you up.
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They're flattering you for one purpose that you will build them back up in return.
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Their whole motivation for building you up is that you would return the favor.
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And in doing so, they're shutting me out.
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Because I brought you the Gospel.
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There is no other Gospel except for the one I brought.
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And when they come in and tell you my Gospel is not true, they are shutting the Gospel out to you.
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Now verse 18.
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This goes along with what you just said, brother.
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What you said about somebody giving a gift.
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Giving a gift.
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Exactly.
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Verse 18 I think deals with that.
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Because he says, it is always good to be made much of for a good purpose.
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So what does that mean? He's not saying that you shouldn't build people up if you've got a good reason to, if you've got a good motivation.
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Like I said, Ed, he encourages me.
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That's a good thing.
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Mr.
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Irv, he encouraged me.
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That's a good thing.
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It's not necessarily wrong to be an encouragement to one another.
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And that's what Paul is saying.
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In fact, wasn't he just doing the same thing two verses earlier? When he said, when I came to you, you loved me and you took me in and you cared for me.
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When I was broken down, you would have given me your eyes.
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He's not flattering them.
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He's just telling them the truth.
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You were good to me.
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That's not flattery.
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So his point in verse 18 is it's always good to be made much of for a good purpose.
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And not only when I'm present with you, my little children.
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And what he's saying there is he's not with them right now, but he's still able to make much of them even when he's away.
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He's doing so by letter.
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For whom I am, again, in anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.
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Now that part, that ending, verse 19, the ending of verse 19 is hard for me.
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It's hard for me in this way because it seems as if what Paul is saying is that they don't know Christ yet.
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Read it again.
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My little children, for whom I am, again, in anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.
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Now I've kind of looked at this several ways and tried to understand it in my own heart because I do believe at least some of the Galatians are saved.
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Yeah, yeah, and he says that.
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My children.
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He's speaking as his spiritual children.
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And so there's a couple ways to understand this phrase until Christ is formed in you.
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The first way would be this.
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Even though they're saved, they're not yet Christ-like, yes? And so they're still in their infancy stage of their salvation.
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They need to grow up.
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And Paul says that like to the Corinthians.
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He says, you know, you're like carnal people.
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You need to grow up in the faith.
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You need to mature.
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You need to get off the milk and get on the solid food.
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So there's that possibility, but also there's this possibility.
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If you look at the word you, that word you, until Christ is formed in you, that word you is in Greek.
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That's in plural.
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So like in English, we don't make a distinction between the plural and the singular.
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If I say you or if I say you, right? I'm talking about you singular.
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And if I say you, I'm talking about all of you and that's plural.
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In English, we don't make the distinction.
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Now in Southern English we do because we say you and y'all.
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Y'all is the Southern plural of you.
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And then you got all y'all and that's everybody.
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Right? So you got you, y'all, and all y'all.
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So...
45:17
But...
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This carries me from the North.
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But you understand, right? What y'all got in the North? Y'all got it somewhere? Yous.
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Yous, guys.
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Yeah, yous.
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All right.
45:31
So...
45:33
So the point I'm making is this.
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And I look this up in both 19 and 20 when he says you, it's both times it's in the plural.
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And in the Greek, there is singular and plural you.
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So I know it's in the plural.
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So he could be saying, I am anguishing as in childbirth until Christ is formed in you all.
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Hear that again.
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I'm anguishing until Christ is formed in you all.
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So he's not saying there aren't some who are saved, but he's saying there are some who aren't.
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And I want to see Christ formed in all of you.
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Because those of you who are turning away from Christ are demonstrating you haven't been saved.
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You're demonstrating your heart hasn't been changed.
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If you're turning away from Christ, later he's going to use the phrase fallen from grace.
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That doesn't mean you were saved and you were lost.
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That means you heard of grace and the message of grace and you turned your back on that grace.
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And he's saying, I want to see Christ formed in all of you.
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That should be the heart of every pastor.
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I don't want to see B.J.
46:36
get saved by himself.
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I want to see B.J.
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get saved along with all of you.
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I want to see Christ formed in all of you.
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And my heart is in anguish knowing that that's not the case, Paul is saying.
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My heart is broken knowing that Christ is not formed in all of you.
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You all are not saved.
47:03
Now verse 20, he ends this section by saying this.
47:09
I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone for I am perplexed about you.
47:18
Again, none of this is easy to understand.
47:21
This is difficult language.
47:22
But what he's basically saying, he's saying I wish you could hear my voice.
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I wish you could hear my voice.
47:33
The written Word does not convey emotion.
47:40
Do you agree? I'm in a moment here.
47:48
But he's not wrong about this.
47:51
He's wrong about a lot of things.
47:54
He's not wrong about this.
47:58
One of the worst communication methods when people are upset is the text message.
48:09
The text message.
48:11
Like with your phone.
48:12
When people are upset, I've been in these conversations.
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Somebody's upset with me and they text me and I can't read whether they're saying it like, Pastor, I want to talk to you.
48:25
Or Pastor, I want to talk to you.
48:29
Yeah, we might add the all caps or we might underline it or we might highlight it in red.
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Or put an emoji of devil horns or something.
48:39
We might try to let them know, but ultimately, the written Word is limited as to how it can convey emotion.
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Remember what I said from the beginning.
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This is all about Paul's heart.
48:48
He wants them to know from his heart what he's feeling.
48:51
So he says in verse 20, I wish I could be present with you and change my tone so that you would know my heart in this, so that you could hear my heart.
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You can't read the heart, but you can hear the heart.
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You ever heard somebody say it's not what he said, it's how he said it? That's a point Paul's making.
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You can't hear how I'm saying this, I wish I were there so you could.
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I wish I were there so you could hear.
49:19
Martin Luther again says this, a common saying is that a letter is a dead messenger.
49:28
Something is lacking in writing.
49:31
You can never be sure how the written page will affect the reader because his mood, his circumstances, his affections are so changeable.
49:38
It is different with the spoken Word.
49:40
If it is a harsh and ill-timed Word, it can always be remodeled.
49:45
No wonder the Apostle expresses the wish that he could speak to them in person.
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See, if I'm saying something to you and I say it kind of harsh, and you look at me and I can tell with your eyes that you took it harsh, I can stop and I can go back and I can rephrase.
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Brother, I didn't mean it to come across that way.
50:01
I wasn't trying to hurt you.
50:02
Or if what I just said offended you, let me address that offense.
50:07
But if I write something...
50:09
I'll give you an example.
50:13
Right now there's this virus going around to the whole United States.
50:18
People are sick.
50:19
You all know about it.
50:20
I don't know how much you know.
50:22
But it's a pretty big deal.
50:23
Everybody knows.
50:25
Well, but I don't know how much...
50:27
You guys don't have a lot of access to the Internet, you know.
50:29
It's always ringing.
50:31
Well, maybe I shouldn't say this.
50:35
Well, let me just say this.
50:38
The elders of our church met last night.
50:42
We decided for one Sunday we're going to ask people not to come and gather for worship.
50:48
But instead, we're going to have service on a live stream.
50:53
I didn't want to do it.
50:55
The other elders didn't want to do it.
50:57
But we are taking into consideration what the government has asked of us.
51:02
They've said this is the right and smart thing to do.
51:05
And we as elders of a church of many different ages of people, we have people that's 85 years old all the way down to infants.
51:13
We have to make decisions that we believe are right for the good of the church.
51:17
And that's hard sometimes because not everybody agrees with the decisions that we make.
51:21
Nobody ever agrees 100%.
51:23
So last night I went home.
51:25
I'm the resident voice of the elders.
51:28
All of us have a different role.
51:30
But I'm the mouthpiece.
51:32
So I went home last night and I wrote a letter to the church explaining to them why we're going to take one Sunday and not gather for worship.
51:42
And that letter took me several hours to write because I wanted to try as best as I could to explain the heart of the elders to the people who are going to be reading this email today when they open up their computers or their phones.
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I know Paul's heart when he says, I wish I could tell you this in person.
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I wish I could go to you all, all of our church members.
52:11
We have about probably 100 members total.
52:14
I wish I could go to each one of them and explain to them our heart because somebody's going to read that letter and get offended.
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No matter how well I wrote it.
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No matter how much I painstakingly poured over what I was saying.
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No matter how much I tried to explain the hearts of the men who are in charge of the church and have been given that charge by God.
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No matter how well I have explained it, someone is going to be offended.
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I wish I could see them eye to eye and have them know my heart.
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That's Paul's point.
52:48
I wish I could be there so you could hear my voice.
52:52
That I could look you in the eyes and you would know that I love you and that's why I'm upset.
53:00
And then he finishes by saying, I am perplexed.
53:04
And again, the ESV, I am perplexed.
53:06
That's not a word we normally use.
53:07
I like the...
53:09
The King James says, in doubt, but I think the better way to say it, he says, I'm at a loss.
53:14
I am at a loss.
53:15
I don't know what to think.
53:17
You say, what do you mean he doesn't know what to think? Because here's a church that he started.
53:24
Here's a church that he founded.
53:26
Here's a church that was going strong for the Gospel.
53:29
Crazy men came in, taught a false Gospel, and now people are falling away.
53:34
And Paul's saying, you loved me.
53:36
You know you loved me.
53:37
You treated me well.
53:39
I came in and gave you the Gospel and you took care of me.
53:41
You would have even given me your eyes if it were necessary.
53:45
And you received the Gospel that I gave you and now you're turning away.
53:50
I'm at a loss for words.
53:55
My heart is broken.
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And I wish you could see it in my face.
54:02
How perplexed I am as to how this has gone.
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Beloved, my friends, my brothers, don't ever think for a moment that your faith should not be accompanied by godly sorrow, by godly joy, because those emotions are not removed from the Bible.
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Those emotions are found right in the pages of Scripture.
54:30
You should be moved not only in the mind, but also in the heart as you follow Christ.
54:37
Let's pray.
54:38
Father, I thank You for Your Word.
54:40
I pray, Lord, for the decisions that are being made all around the world in regard to what we just talked about with this situation, with this sickness that's going around.
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And Lord, I just pray that You would be with us as we all decide and try to take consideration for what's going on.
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I pray, Lord, for these men.
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I pray if there's anyone here, Lord, whose Christ is not formed in them, I pray that You would save their souls.
55:08
I pray that You would forgive their sins.
55:09
I pray that You would grant them the gift of regeneration and faith.
55:13
And Lord, that they would have the experience of not only knowing Christ in their mind, but knowing Christ in their heart.
55:20
Your Word tells us we must believe in our hearts that God raised Christ from the dead.
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Lord, may we all believe in Christ's name.
55:30
Amen.